


turn me back into the pet I was

by clytemnestras



Series: fem feb 2021 [10]
Category: Heathers (1988), Heathers: The Musical - Murphy & O'Keefe
Genre: F/F, Femslash February, Femslash February 2021, Future Fic, Hate Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-13 00:48:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29643246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clytemnestras/pseuds/clytemnestras
Summary: She's still justifying herself now, tearing up the soft four-ply napkin with gold fleurs-de-lis.Hi, I'm just calling to see if this is a fake number like the four I gave you. Hi, just checking in to see if you also think about starting housefires because you're a full grown fucking woman with a kid and a mortgage and toaster that can connect to twitter and you feel just as angry and incomprehensible as you did at sixteen when survival felt like a thing you had to hold between your teeth and bite down on.
Relationships: Heather Duke/Veronica Sawyer
Series: fem feb 2021 [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2132580
Comments: 4
Kudos: 17





	turn me back into the pet I was

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kwritten](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kwritten/gifts).



> [for the ficathon prompt:](https://clockwork-hart1.dreamwidth.org/53291.html?view=1060907&posted=1#cmt1060907)  
> my daughter just watched garden state for the third time this weekend and then told me that i can't understand her ... will you remind me what it's like to be young? can i claw off your face and make it my own - just like we used to do when there was no future
> 
> I'm not sure how happy I am with their voices, being Adults™ etc. but it was a fun write at least

" _Garden State_?" Heather asks with a note of horror. There's something methodical about the way she's stirring her non-fat double shot cappuccino, and Veronica can tell it's just so the insipid little sprinkle heart stops staring up at her. "That's like _vintage_ indie prick autofellatio at this point." Heather takes a sip, and it's definitely too hot, because Veronica can see the steam curling around her cheeks, but Heather doesn't so much as flinch. "Could she not get her hands on _500 Days of Summer_ or what?"

"I think even that's old now." Veronica inhales through her teeth. "It's all about that John Green shit."

"Good god," Heather grimaces and takes a long drink, "is _that_ gonna be their suicide? I might fucking shudder."

They're curled up at a table at the trendily middle class french cafe gentrifying the side of town Heather couldn't be paid to tiptoe into when they were kids. She'd been the one to suggest it, a dark curl of satisfaction in her voice when Veronica had pleaded for an hour of her time. 

She's still justifying herself now, tearing up the soft four-ply napkin with gold fleurs-de-lis. _Hi, I'm just calling to see if this is a fake number like the four I gave you. Hi, just checking in to see if you also think about starting housefires because you're a full grown fucking woman with a kid and a mortgage and toaster that can connect to twitter and you feel just as angry and incomprehensible as you did at sixteen when survival felt like a thing you had to hold between your teeth and bite down on._

"Everything moves so fast these days," Heather says with a flap of her hand, sun catching the Harry Winston on her ring finger, the stone so clear it could start a fire if she held still. "We'd have a flavour of the month and mean it, but I swear my daughter has a flavour of the minute and a half." 

"The music is the worst part," Veronica tells her, taking a messy bite from a ham and cheese croissant, relishing at the way Duke's nose wrinkles in response. "The Shins sure did change my life, they gave me fucking tinnitus."

"And _Teenage Suicide, Don't Do It_ didn't already do that job for you?" Heather spears a piece of honeydew melon with a wooden fork but doesn't bring it to her mouth, painted, immaculately, a matte corvette red. 

Veronica kicks her under the table, a clash of the beaten up biker boots she should have grown out of and the pointy green heels Heather dragged kicking and screaming from 1989 and into style again. Veronica saw a tween in the supermarket in the same ones this morning, along with an emerald and white dogtooth blazer with sleeves puffier than Princess Di's wedding catastrophe and felt bile rise in the back of her throat. She's not sure what's worse, the trauma or the knowledge that her ghosts are retro-chic. 

(Heather would love that, of course. _I may be deader than disco, but fashion is forever, baby. I'll haunt your ass until the 90s revival and be back in again in 30 years_.)

"I'm going to be singing that in my head for the next month, you unbearable harpy." Veronica grins, and she can see from Heather's grimace that she caught her on the shin bone. Left a bruise. It scratches the itch a little.

"Sorry about your tragedy," Heather says, wiping the imprint of her lipstick off of the coffee cup, "but fuck, if my daughter ends up a manic pixie dream girl I might just shoot her myself. _"_

They'd both been a little late on the motherhood train. Duke was busy getting her career gal status set in steel, working her pilates-toned ass all the way to anchor on the daytime news, biggest fish in the smallest pond. Her plan was always to have it all, and _it all_ came in the most expensive silvercross pram her lawyer husband could gift her at the still-radiant age of 38. Veronica had just missed a period one day. She saw her gyno to see if she needed HRT for early menopause like her mom and walked out with a goddamn sonogram.

Mac had a baby in her belly by prom night, but Betty didn't follow too slowly. The life cycle of a Westerberg girl, if you made it out alive, was to get hurried on making more lives, repopulate the cul-de-sac. 

Duke was above that. Veronica hadn't wanted to entertain it at all. But then there was this sonogram, the door swinging at the last chance saloon. Kids were different these days.

She's not sure why she thought that would mean any less terrifying.

"Isn't your kid a goth?" Veronica asks, not bothering to hide the smug smile behind her americano. Heather's face contorts, and it makes Veronica's belly flutter, waiting for the barb, the venom. 

"It's a phase," Heather says between gritted teeth. "She'll be running that place by her junior year. Sylvia will still be playing Clementine, no doubt."

She'd said that once, in tenth grade. That if she ever had a girl she'd name her Sylvia. 

Veronica's not so on the nose these days, but _George_ isn't so far a leap to the right either.

"I dunno," Veronica presses. "I don't think it works like it used to. The conventional is dead, it's the weirdos' world now, my love, long may they reign."

Heather smiles, or scowls, it's hard to quite tell. "You can't take credit, you know? You did your time sucking off the status quo, Ronnie dear. I know that underneath all that independence beats the shrivelled husk of a heartless bitch."

Veronica nudges her with her foot again, softer now, a flirtation, but still enough to earn a wince. "Is that what does it for you, shrivelled husks? It would explain your TV persona."

Heather gets her foot on top and digs the spiked heel right into Veronica's big toe. "I've been voted local anchor of the year six years running. You got a point five of a star review in the local paper for your last… I hesitate to call it a novel -"

"Aww," Veronica says, dropping the napkin and closing her hands around Heather's on the distressed wood table. "You read my book? I'm touched."

"Yeah I'll touch you alright," Heather mutters, digging her nails in.

A minute, or maybe a small century later, Veronica has her ass wedged up against the bathroom sink and one hand curved into Heather's glossy black spanx which don't give her enough room to really touch, but that just adds to the frenzy. There's a hysteria right there between their mouths when Heather bites down on Veronica's lip and scratches her thumb against Veronica's clit with a twist of her own hand, trapped by the skinny jeans Veronica's daughter had called dated when she'd tugged them on that morning. It's better that it's rough and messy and a little unsatisfying. It's better when she can't curl her fingers right and her hand is cramping trying to grind against Heather's clit. It's better when she tries to mouth at Heather's jaw but just ends up slamming their foreheads together, all brute force and frustration. 

It's like highschool, the way every move one of them makes is a way to goad the other, the way neither of them will give an inch but they're both taking whatever they can get. The way they are both moving in tandem, teeth and tongue, Heather's fingers pulling hard at Veronica's hair so what they're doing is unmistakable. Veronica kisses her as filthily as she can manage, licking into Heather's mouth then nipping her teeth again a little harder than she should, her hand rocking brutally as Heather grinds against her palm, whining reedily.

Heather comes for her, and Veronica grins for a short moment before Heather bites down on her collarbone and crooks her fingers hard, and then she's falling apart in a cafe bathroom for a girl she daydreamed of chasing with a shotgun all of her junior year. 

Heather's hands are gone in an instant, lathered with soap and washed clean with a mild look of distaste, so Veronica has to bring her own hand to her mouth, lick her fingers just to make Heather retch. It's gross and immature, but so is the mess they've made, toilet paper all across the floor, moisturiser bottles tipped open into the sink, Heather's silk blouse unmistakably wrinkled. 

Veronica straightens herself out, wiping Heather's lipstick away with a spit-slick thumb and exhales hard, every year she's ever lived looking back at her in the mirror. 

"You like book clubs?" Heather asks, lipstick reapplied, hair un-fucked, posture so perfect Veronica almost looks for the marionette strings.

"No," Veronica says, digging in her bag for her vape pen just so she has something else to look it. She hates the thing, and all the liquids stink like old Victoria's Secret bodyspray, but still, it's better than sour nicotine breath.

"Me neither," Heather says, smiling. "We should start one." She leans over to tuck her bitemark beneath the collar of Veronica's white button down then stands on her toes again for good measure. "Oops."

_Yeah_ , Veronica thinks, meeting her own eyes in the mirror again, pulling her hair back from her face and pulling more, still, until her face is as smooth as it was in highschool. _Oops_. 

**Author's Note:**

> i'm on tumblr! [@bohemicns](http://www.bohemicns.tumblr.com), let's chat!


End file.
